Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Day 5: Roger Zelazny Poetry Month 2017

He sold his soul for
vengeance, after being damned.
How Zelaznian!

I go back and forth on the merit of Dilvish. Intellectually not suited for pulps. Elric of Melnibone worked, but he was written as a subversion. Dilvish is like Elric having Conan's adventures. I think I'll go back for a reread after April is over, but my assessment right now is that Zelazny's writing is too cerebral for the sword and sorcery genre and there are too many elements in the stories that don't quite mesh. If Zelazny had gone on to follow up with his follow up to the Changing Land, exploring what Dilvish's life would have been like now that he no longer had a target for his vengeance, I think he would have pulled those disparate elements into a more cohesive whole.